
Class I qO 
Book Tf ff gS 7 
Copyright N? // ;l/ 



COEffilGHT DEPOSm 



li 



A SOUL'S FARING 



A SouL's Faring 

MURIEL STRODE 



BONI AND LIVERIGHT 

PUBLISHERS HEW YORK 

I' 






Copyright, 1921, 
By Boni & LivERiGHT, Ikc. 



All rights reserved 



0)C!,A614417 

Printed in the United States of America 

APR 13 192i 



;5 • . 

CONTENTS 

I PAGES 

CREATION SONGS 1-8 

II 

SONGS OF THE STRONG 9-48 

III 

SONGS OF HIM 49-57 

IV 

PRAYERS OF A WORLDING 58-65 

V 

SONGS OF LIFE-FREEDOM 66-75 

VI 

A SOUL'S FARING 76-167 



CREATION SONGS 



CREATION SONGS 



I 



I will tell you the things that will ravish your ear 

to hear, for I am Life's lover. 
She told me her secrets, as she lay in my wanton 

arms. 
She told me the things of her deep yearning, of her 

secret heart. 
She told them to my love for her, to the press of 

my breast. 
She told herself to my kisses. 
She met my warm breath with disclosures, as she 

held me close in an informing embrace. 



[1] 



CREATION SONGS 



II 



I am Life's lover! 

I plant the meaning of my great yearning upon 

her upturned lips. 
I press her to my breast in a great answering. 
She shall define the meaning of my fire and fever. 



[2] 



CREATION SONGS 



III 



I am the love-mad of life. 

I have reached out in my pain to the love-frenzied 
grouse. 

I have called in my understanding to the deer in 
their rutting season. 

I have come with gentle words to the mating chirp- 
ings in the eaves. 

I have touched tenderly the seeking pollen. 

I have come with bated breath to the spawn at the 
beginnings of streams. 

I am the ache of overfullness. 

My breasts are crowded with containing. 

My hands tremble with the eagerness of me. 

I am rent and torn with the pain of the unex- 



[3] 



CREATION SONGS 



IV 



I am drunk with being, — 

Life's inebriate reeling down an enchanted way. 
I shout my maudlin greeting to the trees. 
I grasp familiarly the gentle fingers of the grass. 
I press my wine-wet lips to the roses with my in- 
sistent kissing. 



[4] 



CREATION SONGS 



I know the thrill of the grasses when the rain pours 

over them. 
I know the trembling of the leaves when the winds 

sweep through them. 
I know what the white clover felt as it held a drop 

of dew pressed close in its beauteousness. 
I know the quivering of the fragrant petals at the 

touch of the pollen-legged bees. 
I know what the stream said to the dipping willows, 

and what the moon said to the sweet lavender. 
I know what the stars said when they came stealth- 
ily down and crept fondly into the tops of 

the trees. 



[5] 



CREATION SONGS 



VI 



I am the omnipotent life, the potency-thrill. 

I am the fructifier meeting the urge of space, scat- 
tering my spawn like the dust of stars in the 
Milky Way. 

I am red fire leaping in and out of channels, the 

insistence of me, the yearning. 
I am the demand. 



[6] 



CREATION SONGS 



VII 



I am drunk with the wine of me, intoxicant of my 
own being, 

Bacchante of my own soul's steepings. 

Beset by the realization of me, driven by knowing. 

I pour myself out like the singing starling. 

I drink, and kiss Life's wanton lips with the drip- 
ping lips of me. 



[7] 



CREATION SONGS 



VIII 

I am the universe's harlot, 

Selling myself to ecstasy's thrills; 

Giving myself to be debauched of stars, ravished 

of ineff ableness ; 
Seduced by a wanton ungraspableness; 
Coming to marriage bed with infinity's horde, 
Wanton wife of the eternity of things. 



[8] 



SONGS OF THE STRONG 



I 



I, the atom of creation, have arrived. 
I make contact with gods, I align with spheres. 
I am the test, the processment, the determining. 
I am life. I impinge you. I fall upon you with 

great weights. 
I eviscerate you. I tap your arteries and drain 

you. 
I am the insistent one. You cannot escape me. 
I unsettle you. I make you moan over the nights 

and the days. 
I bring you weeping, wringing your hands, crying 

out to the pale stars, promising an atoning. 



[9] 



SONGS OF THE STRONG 



II 



I am attuned to the utterance. 

Day and night strike on the chords of me. 

Humanity brushes me with its sweep. 

Winds moan over me. 

I am attuned to worlds' turnings. 

I melt and merge in the musical ether. 

I am the long ropes of steel, and I am the strands 
of blue moonlight — the strength and the 
beauty. 

I am the violets, and I am the rocks — the kindness 
and the no-capitulation. 

I come in the big recognition of little things, in the 
stupendous portent of a moment, the dynam- 
ics of a blade of grass. 



[10] 



SONGS OF THE STRONG 



III 

I come in my adequacy, my own sufficience, lifting 

you, and me, and the world. 
Nothing is formidable, no thing blocks my way. 
I smile in unfear, in conscious potency. 
I come with yet more strength for the strong, with 

suage for the assuager. I am the sustaining 

arms for the all-sufficient one, the comfort of 

the comforter. 



[11] 



SONGS OF THE STRONG 



IV 



I do not come with charted countries, — I bring you 
plains that are trackless, seas that have never 
known sail. 

I bring you visions without survey, time that has 
never been espoused. 

I bring that that has never been accepted, that is 
beyond the pale, the impossible, the un- 
dreamed-of thing. 

I am the doer of things that cannot be done. 

I chant impossibilities. 



[12] 



SONGS OF THE STRONG 



I am one with the beatings in the breast of the sea, 
with the suspiring moimtains and the living 
ether, with the pulsings of day and the throb- 
bings of night. 

I am beat upon by ineff ableness, by imperceptibili- 
ties. 

I walk in the presence of unformed things. 

I am the thrill of the indefinable, that has identity 
but you cannot measure it, you cannot call its 
name. 



[13] 



SONGS OF THE STRONG 



VI 



I am the cliffs — floods pour down upon me and I 

stand. 
I am the ages, with infinity stretched between my 

shores. 
I am man the container, with God pouring into me 

like a stream. 
I am the channels, the in and the out. 



[14] 



SONGS OF THE STRONG 



VII 

I am the spirit of high hills and of unconfined 

spaces. 
I am the sense of the boulders, of the earth that is 

gnarled. 
I am wild, and rough, and meaningful. 
I grasp Life's wrists until it writhes in pain, in the 

uncontained forcefulness of me. 



[15] 



SONGS OF THE STRONG 



VIII 

I am the revolt, the vehemence, the protest. I am 

the passion. 
I throw myself against the resistance. 
It is the heave and the thrust of me. 



[16] 



SONGS OF THE STRONG 



IX 

I am the lyrist of an hour, — and I am the sayer of 

centuries. I pronounce for eternity. 
I tell you my human pain, — and I tell you my 

God-longing. 
I tell you the ache of my finite being, — and the 

throes of my infinite incompleteness. 
I sing the little lilt of a day, — and I sing the paeans 

of time. 
I am the cry of a titmouse whose nest is robbed, — 

and I am the cry from out the devastated 

womb of worlds. 



[17] 



SONGS OF THE STRONG 



I celebrate. I spread the fete-day of achievement. 

I come with new adventure. 

Out of the dew of the morning I come with further 

word, with a new import and meaning. 
The ages' interpretation I refute. I bring the 

definition out of the hour. 



[18] 



SONGS OF THE STRONG 



XI 



I perpetuate me. 

I fight the fight for my soul, against my own extinc- 
tion. 

I align myself with inextinguishableness. 

I stretch in a living, breathing trail. From ages' 
rim to ages' rim I stretch with my sufficience. 



[19] 



SONGS OF THE STRONG 



XII 



I am the promise written across the sky, I am the 

portentous thrill. 
I am not definitive — I am the pulsings of limitless- 

ness. 
I do not analyze — I fill with a great, unnamed 

yearning. 
I do not determine — I spread the universe before 

you. 



[20] 



SONGS OF THE STRONG 



XIII 

I do not bring you by argument, but by thrills of 

your blood. 
I precipitate you, not by force, but by a feeling. I 

surcharge you with an emotion. 
I melt you and me to a pouring. We burn in the 

white fire of me. 
We are safe in my magic. I restore to a new shape 

and use. 



[21] 



SONGS OF THE STRONG 



XIV 

I am the bore-worm of time, hewing down the 

years with the slow incisors of me. 
Eons yield to my insistence. I eat at their roots 

until time topples at my slow devouring. 
I am the Answerer. I walk the starry strands of 

skies, grasping the intent. 
I read the secret. The unanswering Sphynx finds 

its voice to me. 



[22] 



SONGS OF THE STRONG 



XV 



Ten thousand voices say No, but I come in ten 
thousand muhiples of my strength. 

I am my own affirmative that transcends all nega- 
tives and denials. 

The day renounces me — and I sink my roots 
deeper into the centuries. 

You may not hear, but your dust will quicken. 

Myself! — intrepid I fling it in kindness to the 
remoteness of time. 



[23] 



SONGS OF THE STRONG 



XVI 

I span continents and overstep seas. 

Planets are in my itinerary. 

I greet the sun in its habitat. 

I sail placidly with the moon. 

I am the big concept, the infinity of measurement. 



[24] 



SONGS OF THE STRONG 



XVII 

I am the apex, standing aghast at the route I have 

come. 
I am the universe, appalled at my own magnitude. 
I lead the concourse of onwardness, yet dumb with 

incomprehensibleness of that which I am. 



[25] 



SONGS OF THE STRONG 



XVIII 

I step the hills, I escape the thraldom. 

I match my breath against the great, deep currents 

of the sky, against the suspirings of time. 
I am the claimer of infinity. 
I am the cycles of increasement, the ages of the 

accretion of life. 



[26] 



SONGS OF THE STRONG 



XIX 

I am the extreme, that you may have the courage 

to be the average. 
I anticipate time, that you may come in perfect 

articulation with the day. 
I mount to the perilous heights, that you may have 

the courage to come up to the happy mountain 

meadows. 
I build my towers to the sun, I flaunt my jeweled 

minarets to the sky, that you may build a 

glad roof and a happy housement. 



[27] 



SONGS OF THE STRONG 



XX 



I am not the follower of designs: I am the con- 

ceptor. I bring the plans. 
I am the creator and his seven days. I bring the 

blueprint of creation. 



[28] 



SONGS OF THE STRONG 



XXI 

I am the accouchement of formidable things. 

I bear a hill, I bring into conscious existence a 

forest, a plain, or a sea. It is their spawn I 

scatter. 
I plant the seed of mastodonic birth. 
I give my breasts to titanic things. 

I am delivered of infant mountains. 

The foetus of wide-open space forms in me. 

The firmament is conceived. 

I come fructified of big issues, the spawn-bed of 

world-events. 
I am Titan Mother, the Great Progenitor, Parent of 

Stupendities. 



[29] 



SONGS OF THE STRONG 



XXII 

I am the pillars that uphold the earth, the arch that 
lifts up the sky. 

I am the rim of the horizon supporting the up- 
turned bowl. 

I command night and day. Stars course at my 
calling, the moon shines at my behest. 

At my command the sun stands still. 

I am keeper of light and of shade — it is I that 
disperse. 

I set the tides free — it is my leash that restrains 
them. 

I am keeper of the caves of the winds — it is I that 
open the door and send them scurrying. 



[30] 



SONGS OF THE STRONG 



XXIII 

Eternity is in my right hand; 

Infinity rests like a drape on my shoulders. 

I am omnipotent, omniscient, all time and all 

place. 
I am infinite, eternal energy, coursing like swollen 

rivers through the channels of creation. 



[31] 



SONGS OF THE STRONG 



XXIV 

I am not the quick-consuming — the sisal-grass and 
the tinder. I am the molten craters of worlds, 
burning as long as time. 



[32] 



SONGS OF THE STRONG 



XXV 

I do not measure to a day — I am of cyclic propor- 
tions. 

My arteries are seas' coursings. 

My breath is the winds blown over worlds. 

My heartbeats are the swing of the pendulum that 
marks infinity's accretion and decay. 

Races exist, and cease to exist, in a single suspir- 
ing of me. 

Worlds are, and are no more, in a simple turn of 
my hand. 



[33] 



SONGS OF THE STRONG 



XXVI 

I am the primal things, form out of incohesion, 

articulation out of inaccent. 
I am the roll of a million years. 
I come like the roaring winds, like pines moaning, 

like great, snow-covered steppes, majestic and 

awful. 
I am the caught breath of the heights, uttering in 

a voice big with vastness. 

I deliver myself, I discharge the day. 

I come to the forbidden edge. 

I strap on the sheath of unfear and gird the strands 

of daring about me. 
It is I who must subdue the beasts by a look, and 

command the potencies by a gesture. 



[34] 



SONGS OF THE STRONG 



XXVII 

I emancipate myself into the ranks of the signifi- 
cant, 
I make a difference in the count and the weigh, 
I augment the ranks of purpose, 
I add depth to the hour 

I am identified with great bridges, with high towers 
and long tunnelings. 

What I build I build with steam-she vels, with der- 
ricks and cranes. 

I sink great pilings, and great walls arise. 

I am the Significant One of great issues and enter- 
prises. 



[35] 



SONGS OF THE STRONG 



XXVIII 

I am that wild thing that sweeps over the world like 

the brown panthers of the wind. 
My jaw is truculent and moist with a sense feeling. 
I am scouring space for a flavor, for the taste of 

a scented thing. 
I am breast to breast with the great import; 
Stepping the stride of the infinite intent; 
Measuring myself against the utmost possibility. 



[36] 



SONGS OF THE STRONG 



XXIX 

I am the bloodhounds of reality. I have caught 
the scent and my nostrils are mad. 

I shall yet hold it in my iron teeth and hear it 
crunch with the press of my iron jaw. 

I shall tear it limb from limb. 

I am the tawn of beast-men, the savagery of wild 
desire. I come in insecurity and the endless 
quest, into unconquered jungles and the cer- 
tainty of danger. 

I summon my forces and am on my way, ally to 
my strength, fortified in the desire of me, 
mortised in the yearning, girded by the great 
unfear. 



[37] 



SONGS OF THE STRONG 



XXX 

I come with my rendered life. 

I carry burdens: I lift mountains with a song. 

I dig ditches — furrows to the moon and trenches 

to the Milky Way. 
I level ages with my strength and brawn. 



[38] 



SONGS OF THE STRONG 



XXXI 

Out of the red pain of life, I come singing the 

white joy of being. 
I come becarroled out of the crushings. 
I find the triumph over moaning wheels. 

Out of myself! Out of myself! — ^worlds, eons and 

acts; 
Realities, consummations; 
Amplitudes and abundance. 



[39] 



SONGS OF THE STRONG 



XXXII 

I am the stalwart life, robust with much living, 

spread with much containing. 
I am fibrous with thought, and sinewy with feeling, 

grown big with contact. 
I am a god grown tall, filled with adultage. 
Worlds ripen, time matures, and man arrives out 

of himself. 



[40] 



SONGS OF THE STRONG 



XXXIII 

I am prolific with accomplishment, the doer of 
things, the accomplisher of days. 

I come in the ecstasy of performance and fulfill- 
ment, fashioning from the vision, faithful to 
the potency and the portent. 

I read the signs in the sky, and am on my way. 

I hear the command, and do not falter. 



[41] 



SONGS OF THE STRONG 



XXXIV 

I am that ultramontane thing, that beyond-the- 
mountain feeling. 

I am that that is over the rim, beyond the yearn- 
ing. 

I am the seeker, the questing, the endless unrest, 
the spirit-adventurer. 

I mark paths across virgin mains. 

I stalk the cormorant's scream to the white archi- 
pelagoes. 

I drive the Southern Remoteness, and come upon 
the nesting place of the black penguins of my 
soul. 

I bring you something new out of truth — a black 
feather from an aerie, a fledgling from a 
stony, proclivitous nest. 



[42] 



SONGS OF THE STRONG 



XXXV 

I am the security. 

The roots of ages are sunk deep in me. 

God is mortised in my granite walls. 

I am the clod that has taken wing, the vapor that 
has become a burning. 

I am the conflagration sweeping down the tinder- 
paths of the sky, the flame consuming. 



[43] 



SONGS OF THE STRONG 



XXXVI 

I am the utterer, creation's spokesman. 

I am the day uttering the light, the night uttering 
the stars. 

I am the tanager uttering its crimson, the spoken 
breast of the peacock. 

I am the stem uttering the roses, the ground utter- 
ing the grasses, and the hills uttering the 
trees. 



[44] 



SONGS OF THE STRONG 



XXXVII 

I am the vats, the containers, the storage house of 
the infinite supply. 

I come in the power of me. I who tended a single 
ash, am keeper of the forests. 

I that minded a lone star, am minder of the firma- 
ment. 

I that kept the narrow path to my gate, am keeper 
of the stretches of infinity. 

I intensify life. 

I compel grasses to utter out of sands. 

I strike the rock with the command of me. 

I slay the desert that stretches over life with its 

sinister, hot-vapored meaning. 
I pit the demand of me against the denial. 



[45] 



SONGS OF THE STRONG 



XXXVIII 

I unsettle you. 

I give you fitful startings in the night, outcries in 
your dreams. 

I am the goad. 

I taunt you into darings. 

I toss you into unfathomings. 

I give you the sword with the two edges and send 

you forth to win or lose by what you are. 
I am the demand — no proffered halfness, no grim- 

visaged defeat. 

I grant you explorations, adventurings. 

I grant you menace and the bloodshed of your 

spirit, and the crucifixion at the end of the 

way. 



[46] 



SONGS OF THE STRONG 



XXXIX 

I am the established. 

I am the roses that bloom, regardless of the sput- 
tering. 

I am the stars that shine unperturbedly. 

I roll on like the years — nothing impedes me. 

I shine like the sun, regardless of the day. 

I am fixed, eternal. Events revolve around me. 
They are the turning. 



[47] 



SONGS OF THE STRONG 



XL 



I am the seven league boots of being. 

I take the measure of infinite stride. 

I loose myself from circumscription, and set my- 
self free into unrestricted movement and 
space. 

I make a path for titans. 

I blaze a way for gods. 



[48] 



SONGS OF HIM 



I am world-free! 

I drink the seas, I stalk the stars, 

I step frozen Northern worlds. 

I lie in my bare, brown skin under palmetto trees. 

I am loosed out of me. 
I shout my greetings to Him in space. 
I halloo Him in the copper-colored sky. 
I reach out my hands to grasp Him as the winds 
sweep by. 

I am world-free! 

I deliver me from myself, I purchase release. 

I pay with knowing and the endless insistence. 



[49] 



SONGS OF HIM 



II 



I come in the Great Impersonal, to show you the 
way to the Great Personal; 

I find God for you, that you may find yourself; 

I bound the infinite, that you may take the measure 
of finitism. 

Stalking me to the stars, you will discover the 
earth; 

Following me to Him, you will come upon your- 
self and your brother. 

I do not bring you a pigmy's God — I am of world- 
bigness and I bring you the Adequate One. 

I do not defame Him by interpolation. 

I do not discredit Him by a meager grasp. 



[50] 



SONGS OF HIM 



III 



I shout His name from the battlements of life. 
I utter Him in words of angry granite. 
I write Him in streaks of fire across the sky. 
I moan Him in rumblings like a storm at sea. 
I flaunt Him like the black skirts of the furies. 
I scream Him like the winds beset. 
I accent Him. I topple down great avalanches, 
and cause great upheavals. 



[51] 



SONGS OF HIM 



IV 



I come calm in Him. 

The serenity of His concept sits upon my brow. 

I am the equipoise of His worlds, the evenness of 

His pendulum. 
I am the rhythm of His law, the meter of His 

musical utterance. 

I am His deep stillness. 

His quiet dawn grey; 

The lilt of His butterflies' wings. 

The quiet pouring of His day. 



[52] 



SONGS OF HIM 



I come in the majesty with which God endowed me: 

In the grace He gave to the trees; 

In the loveliness which He bestowed upon the 

flowers ; 
In the rhythm of the singing winds and waters. 
All their beauty and charm are mine. 
I am more lovely than the day. 
The grey, mist-mantled evening is not so seductive. 
The blue of heaven is duplicated in my own soul. 
The songs of the birds are in the high branches of 

my being. 
The sun shines warm and gold to meet that warm, 

gold sun of me. 
I am nature's concentrated loveliness, the epitome 

of all her wealth, and bounty, and abundance. 
There is no dearth of any wonderful thing in me. 



[53] 



SONGS OF HIM 



VI 

I am the gentleness of His hand, the kindness of 

His eye. 
I am His tender contour, and the smile of His 

gentle lips. 
I am His presence, like a heart-mist, and His 

strength, like woven faith-tendrils. 
I am His compassion, like a mother's tears. 

I am the great, enveloping care, the infusing affec- 
tion. 

I soften, I ease the glare, and smooth the sharpness 
of the angles. 

I am the alembics. I cast in the grief that over- 
lingered, I cast in your joy — and sometimes 
I cast in you. 



[54] 



SONGS OF HIM 



VII 



I set myself free into the blue-flowing sky, 

I melt with the star-mist, 

I am one with the moon's pourings. 

I come limpid and easy to life. 

Meeting its curves and its undulations, as the 

shore-line meets the sea. 
As the sky meets the indenture of the hills. 



[55] 



SONGS OF HIM 



VIII 

I measure life by my capacity to feel the fields. 
To stand up to the hills. 
To lay my hand in His. 

I sound the deep-running things of God. 

I sink the plummet of me deep into the fathoms of 

His meaning. 
I reach Him with the long arms of my yearning. 



[56] 



SONGS OF HIM 



IX 



I relax myself into the Great Tenderness. 
The Great Heart folds me to its breast, in the 
mother-arms of its all-pervading care. 



[57] 



PRAYERS OF A 
WORLDLING 



I said I would face my prayers. 

What was the secret thing I was praying with my 

silent suspirings? 
What was the furtive supplication, the thing I 

pleaded off guard? 
What was it I wanted, stripped of all subterfuge of 

analysis and meaning? 



[58] 



PRAYERS OF A WORLDLING 



II 



I would know this thing that smiled in its waking 
moments, and moaned in its sleep. I would 
know the words of its somnolent uttering. 

I would know why it tossed like a soul beset. 

I would know its punishment, its denial. 

I would know what it was that it accepted from the 
day, and repudiated in its dream. 



[59] 



PRAYERS OF A WORLDLING 



III 

I prayed with my lips, but what was the thing that 
I prayed with my heartbeats, with my silent 
eyes? 

What was the secret thing of my longing? What 
was my fear? Why did I not call it by its 
name? 

Did I not trust this yearning creature of gold lace 
and purple embroideries? 

Did I fear her dream of magnificence? 

Did I fear the touch of her ravishing, her gold 
embrace? 

Why did I not trust this one of the moonmesh hair? 

God trusts His nights of silent, silver pourings, 
and His dawns of blatant splendor. 

He trusts His moons of molten gold, and His twi- 
lights of streaming beauty. 

Why do I not trust this glory-creature that is clam- 
oring in me to be loosed, to be set free from 
the grey and the ashen — 

This paradise-bird-of-longing, this luxuriat of 
denial, this beauty-thing denied to beauty? 

[60] 



PRAYERS OF A WORLDLING 



IV 



I will pray with the integrity of me, God, with the 
truth of me. If my sybarite soul moans, let 
me not lie. 

Let me not come to you traducing its beauty-long- 
ings. 

Let me not cripple its hands that reach to grasp the 
stars. 

Let me not stifle it, God, this bride of moonbeams. 

Let me not deny this inebriate of the fragrant twi- 
light air. 

Let me not traduce this beauty-iover, nor misrepre- 
sent it to you who know. 

Let me bring it into alignment with your own 
beauty-frenzy that hung a wall of trailing 
arbutus against the sky, that banked long 
cliflTs of purple shadows against the grey, 
gold-shot twilight. 

Let me not come in ascetic denial, mocking your 
abundance, you who hung purple grapes in 
I the vineyard, and scattered your prodigal 
soul like a wedding feast over the world. 

[61] 



PRAYERS OF A WORLDLING 



Let me come honesdy, God, let me not dissemble. 

If my heart is bleeding from the sting of coarse 
hemp and ropen girdles, let me not misrep- 
resent. 

If I am mad with the sight of stars, and frenzied 
with the beauty of the silver, wanton moon; 

If I am stricken by the sight of your effulgence on 
rose gardens — 

Let me come honestly, God, let me not fear to 
declare. 

Let my soul feel no shame at its beauty-ravishment 
and longing. 

Let it accept this holy sense of splendor, and trust 
its grasping, eager hands. 

Let it remember you, the Fire-God of Splendor 
acclaim, and come in the magnificent burn- 
ing of me. 



[62] 



PRAYERS OF A WORLDLING 



VI 

I am the nun of the grey-mist veils, but I tell you 
I am come in the outcries of my mighty color- 
ing, calling to the God of Rescue that made 
abalone shells, and sunsets over seas; 

That made crimson poppies and glaring streaks of 
red in the morning sky. 

I am calling to Him in his knowing, this God of 
Adjustment and Appease; 

This God that uttered brown wrens, and then 
turned, in the demand of His spirit, and 
uttered flamingoes, and golden pheasants. 

I appeal to this vindicating God that expressed 
violet and oxeye, and then turned, in the 
flaunt of His soul, and screamed out of His 
being the utterance of an autumn forest. 



[63] 



PRAYERS OF A WORLDLING 



VII 

Once I was the brown wren, but I tell you this 
brown coat no longer represents me, for I am 
come in screaming colors. I have torn the 
brown song from my throat. My soul is beat- 
ing down the grey day that restrains me. 

I know His quickened breath, and the trembling of 
His fingers when He pressed into creation, out 
of drab soil, the iris and the tiger-lily. 

I know the tingle of His soul when He pressed pink 
magnolias out of bare stems, and assembled 
fiery poinsettias out of the colorless earth and 



[64] 



PRAYERS OF A WORLDLING 



VIII 

Let me not lie, God. Let me not drape my soul in 
grey, and come to you with meekly folded 
hands, stultified by that which does not ex- 
press. 

Let my revolting hands tear off this quaker-array, 
and let me stand forth in the lurid rage of me. 

Let me come naked under the sun, God, but let me 
not come white when my yearning is crimson. 
Let me not come in sandals when my feet are 
ravished by the consciousness of gold shoes. 

Let me not come with lying, empty hands, I, who 
have come grasping at ecstasy, down inebrial 
ways. 



[65] 



SONGS OF LIFE- 
FREEDOM 



I 

I breathe freedom. I drink it in long, deep 
draughts. 

I flank its current and turn it for my own inundat- 
ing. 

I have made channels for it, and reservoirs for its 
containing. 

It is the answer to the drought of me, to the parched 
years, to the earth of me that was bare and 
sear. 

It is the rain to the desert of me, and I have com- 
manded the freshets, the overflow. 



[66] 



SONGS OF LIFE-FREEDOM 



II 



I am no longer bonded to a locality, the habitat of 

a confine. 
I free myself into world spaces. 
Vastness is in my adventure. 
I am a world-person, a sky-plainsman, a maker of 

spirit trails. 



[67] 



SONGS OF LIFE-FREEDOM 



III 



Once I opened to the day, — now I open to eternity. 
I had scope only for my garden, — now vastness 

does not take the measure of me. 
I had room only for my own, — now the concourses 

of the earth march through me in a long file. 
I am universal consciousness, risen out of myself, 

projected into you and the multitudes of the 

earth. 



[68] 



SONGS OF LIFE-FREEDOM 



IV 



I am walking fast, for I am walking far. 
I swing out with a free, swift, rhythmic gait. 
I am set to bound immeasurableness, to include the 
height, and depth, and breadth of me. 



[69] 



SONGS OF LIFE-FREEDOM 



I am the invisible currents of power coursing the 
universe. 

I am the insistence of the seasons — nothing re- 
strains me. 

I come like the approach of spring — no hand with- 
holds me. 

No hand stays the roses, or holds back the spears 
of wheat. 



[70] 



SONGS OF LIFE-FREEDOM 



VI 



I play with elementals as with a toy. 

Lightning is but a circlet of light about my throat. 

Suns run in strands of gold about my white fore- 
head. 

Earths are a flower-cliff of wild nasturtium. 

Stars are but fireflies — I catch them in my playful 
hands. 



[71] 



SONGS OF LIFE-FREEDOM 



VII 



I claim that out of the wind that shouts me as it 

rides by; 
And that out of the hills that inflate me as I look 

upon them. 
I claim that out of the sky that distends me to 

meet it; 
And that out of the horizon that stings me with its 

recedence. 



[72] 



SONGS OF LIFE-FREEDOM 



VIII 

I ride the bridleless steeds. Their flying feet have 

wings. 
We are lashed by a mighty spur. We achieve 

transcendency. We leap the crags of space. 
We are the world's wild riders, the daring ones, 

the reckless ones, fearless and safe. 
We are the Bedouins of being. 



[73] 



SONGS OF LIFE-FREEDOM 



IX 



I said God's day was to the fleet — and I mounted 

the winds. 
I said God's seas were to seamen— -and I mounted 

the wild, sea mares that tossed foam of flame 

from their nostrils. 



[74] 



SONGS OF LIFE-FREEDOM 



I ride the wind with the brown mane and the fiery 

nostrils. 
I ride the wild horses of the world, the unreined 

forces. 
I leap their bare backs, and direct them. 
We are the fleet coursers, outbrea'sting the ages and 

immensity. 
Time recedes, and we are neck and neck with 

tomorrow. We are gaited to life's unending- 

ness. 



[75] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



I 



If one could but arrive at a normal expression, how 
infinitely one could trust it. But life the 
beauteous is compelled into a distortion; life 
the human is made a beast. 

One does not represent — he misrepresents. 

One does not express — he is a malexpression. 

But I will prove salvation. I will save myself. I 
will rescue the outcast of me. I will be saved 
by the brotherhood in my own breast. 

I will rise above this personal damnation, into the 
divine, impersonal infinitude that I am. 

I will rescue my life from ultimates. I defy the 
finals that are staring me in the face. 

I extricate myself from the past and the threat of 
the future. 



[76] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



II 



Somewhere in me there has been confusion of 
identity. I do not know my own name. I do 
not know if I am marshglow or wormwort, 
daffodil or purslane. 

Once I thought maybe it was lily, or rose, or 
starmist. 

I have lost the words of the grasses and the friend- 
liness of the trees. The leaves do not speak 
to me. The birds do not call my name. 

I have lost the plains and the feel of world spaces. 
I have lost God. Have I lost the antennae by 
which I can feel my way back to Him? 



[77] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



III 

I moan with the pain of my thoughts, remembering 
how I might have blossomed as stars. 

I might have brushed the very gates of heaven in 
my flight, but I flew low over moors and 
morasses, and the poisoned everglades of 
being. 

But I am the militant of life. I come with clenched 
spiritual fists, screaming my protest to the 
Creative Force, seeking the interpretation, 
straining to translate, to grasp the elusive 
meaning of me. 

Mine is no facile accouchement. It is in the moan- 
ing of the spirit. But I shall not mind that I 
am racked and torn if something new may be 
bom out of the depths to supersede this mon- 
ster. 



[78] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



IV 

I know by the hunger that eats at my heart that 
there is a fulfilling answer. I know by the 
great misery of life that there must be its 
antithesis — a great joy. I am come with a 
craving as deep as worlds. 

I am a wolf that sits back on its haunches in the 
night, at the edge of the wilderness, and wails, 
— a cry for its own that is unanswered. May- 
be I am a wolf-dog. Maybe the wolf in me 
wails, and the dog in me answers with a moan, 
rent by contending forces. 



[79] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



Beautiful world! I see you. One day I shall com- 
prehend you. When life comes by in trap- 
pings and state, I shall no longer be the 
beggar at the gate. I shall be the lord that 
receives you. 

Wondrous life! And we allow it to become so 
marred. We maim it in its young limbs, and 
render it unpliant in its lithe soul. 

How life would touch us with fond caress, and our 
cold hands but chill her. 

We shout at her. It may be if we would whisper 
she would hear. Her soul is not attuned to 
raucous sound. 



[80] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



VI 

Life is beautiful, only we haven't known how to 
keep it radiant and rosy-cheeked and lovely. 
We have allowed it to become sickly, with 
green and ashen hue. 

We do not know how to accept life. There is the 
Gracious Giver, the gracious gift, and the 
gracious receiver. We have not grace to re- 
ceive, nor grace to contain. Clumsy of soul, 
we do not know how to open our hearts like 
the flowers that receive the dew, nor lean like 
the leaves when the breeze would kiss them. 
There are dawns to which we never open, and 
singing winds to which our breasts are dumb. 
There are rare places of the soul, but we 
never go with urge and fleetness. 



ran 



A SOUL'S FARING 



VII 



I shall yet come to accept life for the thing I have 
pronounced it to be. 

Life is dragging, but I shall yet lift it up, I shall 
carry it aloft buoyantly. I shall no longer 
bear this weight on my back, this weight of 
my own accretion, these meaningless tons of 
myself, stooped and leaden-footed, old with- 
out age or wisdom. 

Truth is light of foot like a fawn, not heavy like 
lead. It is young with the spirit of youth, but 
we bend it with weight in its still young years. 



[82] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



VIII 

And there are myriads more who have lost the look 
of peace and wear the tensed look of fear and 
misgiving, who trail their heavy lives as a 
convict drags his ball and chain, wearing the 
grey prison pallor, and looking away with 
lusterless, longing eyes to the green fields of 
being. 

Can one deal with realities that are not shaken with 

sobs and wet with tears? 
Sorrow is beautiful, but what if it is menace? 
One can glorify pain, but what if it is a mistaken 

endurance? 



[83] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



IX 

I cannot evade or ignore the unanswering. It 
prods me like a sharp steel. My soul will not 
accept indifference. I have but one life to 
live that I know of, and that must yet come to 
me that will lift me up, and out, and over, 
and beyond, away from myself of limitations, 
into my better, bigger self, and lofty spaces. 

What avail to bear great loads of life, if one comes 
only to believe that every back in the world 
is bent from its burden? 

What avail the stalwart soul, if there are only 
anemic conquests? 



[84] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



I will write it all over my life "Risen again!" 
I form a new alliance with the Militant God of 

Survival. 
God has been cheated, I have been cheated, and 

life has been traduced. 
I will stand with the past beneath my feet. 



[85] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



XI 



I will let God flow unimpeded through me. Un- 
impeded through me! A channel choked with 
a lifetime of debris, of wrecked and broken 
years, tangled hours and intentions. Not 
room for God, not room for me! 

I will clear away all impediment that hinders the 
free-flowing of God in my life. He shall be 
as unrestricted rivers. 

What have I interposed between God and myself? 
I will tear it down as I would tear down a 
wall between me and the sun. No thing has 
reason for being that stands between me and 
Him. I will not embrace that which I can- 
not lay at His feet, which I cannot bring to 
His door for admittance, no matter how for- 
midable may be its dispersing, no matter how 
fatal. 



[86] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



XII 



I was meant to be woman-the- joyous, but I carry 
in my heart a thousand centuries of pain. 

I was meant to be woman-the-radiant, but my eyes 
tell a world-old story. 

I was born to be glad. That thing has no sacred- 
ness, and I owe it no respect, that leaves me 
leaden, and heavy, and old. 

There is time for gladness, there is reason for 
joy, and I mean to discover them. 

Life is not by this struggle to death, rather than 
to life, this annihilating that should be an 
establishing. 

This destruction that we permit through our own 
unenlightenment, this gnarled and knotted be- 
ing, this life bound to its pack, is not of God. 
It is of you, or it is of me. God gave us time 
to live, but we have so distorted it that we 
have only time to perish. 



[87] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



XIII 

Labor is saving, but drudgery has damnea my 
soul, the task without the illumination. It 
eats at life. It devours the vitals. It leaves 
one insensate, save to weariness. What will 
it bring that will atone for that which it takes 
away? Where are the buoyancy and resili- 
ence? There are only the sodden, yellow- 
white features of drivenness, of eternal 
hurrying. 

My hands are hard, but my soul is still in bondage. 
If the breaking of the body availed anything, 
that would be its justification, but it avails 
nothing. That is the rebuke of it. 

I will work in the calm application of my soul, 
and I shall see mountains give way, and seas 
turned in their course. 

I will be about my real task, that work that is a 
privilege, not an infliction, not a penance, — 
the work that I love, and the work that loves 



[88] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



XIV 

I will demand of myself those things that take the 
measure of my possibilities. 

Too long I have been chimney-sweep of life, when 
I might have been sweeping the Stardust of 
Heaven. 

If one becomes the expression of one's dominant 
thought, have I thought dish-water or dew, 
scullery pans or roses? Do I abide by my 
kitchens, or by my fields? Do I think my 
narrow human life, or do I sometimes think 
God? 



[89] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



XV 



Am I the victim of misplaced zeal, of misdirected 
force and energy? I dig and sweat in the 
furrows, when there are sky-furrows awaiting 
the kiss of my plow's bright steel. There is 
the sowing of the seed of life and eternity. 
There is possibility of star-harvest, of garner 
of glory and gleam. 

I have been the self-appointed scullion of the 
world, washing the pots and pans of the uni- 
verse. If it were the limit that I could do, 
then would it be my divine task. But it is not 
the limit, and therein lies the inexcusableness 
and shame. 

I have gone courageously to my alien task, but 
there is one in me that weeps. I have assented 
to all the denial of the way, but that one lifts 
up her insurgent head. I have said "Yes," 
but I have seen her eyes flash fire as she 
answered "Never!" 



[90] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



XVI 

Am I afraid to be beautiful? Afraid to claim 

grace as my own? 
I will take away the look of ashes, and restore the 

look of dawn. 



[911 



A SOUL'S FARING 



XVII 

What if I have done everything but the one thing? 
What if I have worked all around it? It may 
be I have built houses and caused fields to 
grow, when mine was to build a feldspar 
cabin. That was my peculiar task. And not 
until I build my feldspar cabin! Not until 
that hour! Not until then! 

I have minded spigots, when it was mine to tend 
the seas. 

I have put my arms around the finite, when it was 
mine to reach out with my long embrace and 
include the infinite everything. 



[92] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



XVIII 

I have erred so unremittingly in my fallacious 
conception of utility. I will look upon the 
rose gardens whose use is beauty. Utilities? 
Did I not know that roses were of the utilities 
of life? 

I knew that I must plant my fields to save my body, 
but did I not know that I must plant my rose 
gardens to save my soul? 

Shall I stitch and stitch that my flesh may be cov- 
ered, and leave no time for the weaving of 
fabric for my shivering spirit? 

Shall I supply the fuel of my flesh, and allow my 
soul's fires to be extinguished? 

Is it more vital that I eat than that I have ecstasy? 
Shall I not more surely perish from lack of 
rapture than from lack of bread? 



[93] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



XIX 

Do I not know that beauty is all-healing? That a 
breath of lavender will restore me? That 
one hyacinth pressed to my breast will renew 
the flesh and the faith? 

I will come with great draughts of remedy for my 
spirit! Turn on the roses! Turn on the 
mignonette! Open the spigots of the trumpet- 
flowers! Draw from the azalea! Divert the 
poppy-streams to me, and the flow of the 
locust's exotic breath, for I am body-ill from 
the endless flow of life's drab-grey! 

Tap the reservoirs of the tuberoses! Bind up my 
spirit with their efflorescence, for my body's 
sake! 

Bathe me! Inundate me! Baptize me! Let me 
be renewed! 

I need not unguent but joy! For the healing of my 
body let my soul swoon! 



[94] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



XX 



I have set out to grow in possessions — ^the posses- 
sion of myself. One day I shall count my 
holdings, and they will include me, big, 
round, significant me. 

I will make a new institution of being, the institu- 
tion of loyalty to myself, and the God whose 
instrument I am. 



[95] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



XXI 

The things that are young and fresh and buoyant, 
where are they? 

Did I not use to sing at mom? Had I not gladness 
to greet the day? Where did I lay them 
down, and is it too far to go back? Too far 
to return to the spirit of youth and the young 
things of joy? 

I am the dry bed of a stream. Where are the 
water and the verdure, the green hanging 
banks? The dipping willows, where are they 
for me? By what process am I dry, and 
bare, and vacant? How have I drained the 
waters and dried up the green? 

I am drained dry by the huge, blood-sucking ten- 
tacles of being, but I shall yet be restored to 
the font of the juices of life. I have a right 
to be watered abundantly. I have a right to 
be green and living. 



[96] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



XXII 



I am the starved hound of being, following an 
endless trail, day upon day spent in coursing, 
night upon night exhausted by the chase. 



[97] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



XXIII 

One day I shall have the feeling that I have 
arrived, after many wandering, alien years. 

I shall reach that point in life where Life will not 
resist, but will acquiesce, will wish to be for 
me, will respond to my touch and my yearn- 
ing, will be friendly and pleased. I shall 
no longer be stranger, but kin, and she will 
be glad of me. She will open her gates and 
let me in. 



[98] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



XXIV 

I will release all the confined forces of my soul 
and apply them directly to that which I may 
be. 

I will release all my thousand possibilities and 
send them broadside against life. 

No more shall the performance know the unfaith. 
No longer shall the structure know the un- 
certain hand. 

My life shall possess me. I shall come mad as the 
Mullah about it. 



[99] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



XXV 

One day I shall command the fertility that will 
cover all the waste places. 

I of the great dearth will come with the great full- 
ness. 

My soul is prolific ; let it press on, changing water 
into wine, and the bare stem of me into the 
blossoming rod of Aaron. 



[100] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



XXVI 

I tried to sweat my life into beauty, and then one 
day I thought I would sit me down in the fur- 
rows. I would stop the wheels long enough 
to enlist God. I would stop the mad rush 
that hour, that moment, and sit me down and 
pray. 

I would come with tranquillity, with repose of the 
flesh, with the institution of easement and 
peace. I would come with the thought, the 
thrill, that would make dead eyes quiver and 
dead flesh start. I would lift with my yearn- 
ing that which I could not lift with my arms. 
The potency of my prayer would be mightier 
than brawn and swifter than feet. I had 
trudged — now I would sit me down and pray 
for the chariot out of the sky. 



[101] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



XXVII 

The arid country! I look out over the sagebrush 
plain, panting and parched, and sense its long 
thirst for the rain. I wonder if its heart 
breaks because the streams of life are parched 
and dry, that no cooling shade fosters, and 
no succulent green saves? Does its soul 
stifle when the hot winds blow and the burning 
sands beat down? 

Is its throat cracked and aching in the alkali heat? 
Does it know a yearning as deep as death for 
the sound of a purling stream? 



[102] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



XXVIII 

To come always with wistful longing to possess 
life, to fold her to my breast, to feel her kiss 
and her warm breath, to hear her say "My 
lover has come!" 

She will yet open her arms to receive me. She 
will come as a lover to my burning lips, and 
speak in love's language. 

I shall measure to her stature and her yearning. 
I shall know that I am loved and wanted. 



[103] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



XXIX 

My garden shall yet hang heavy with tardy bloom. 
I shall pluck the fig in its late ripeness. The 
sumac will crimson for me in the frost of the 
fall. I shall gather wild grapes in their em- 
purpling, and come with wild hops torn from 
the tops of frost-touched trees. 

I shall gather myself in great, ripe, yellow sheaves 
of me, in great clusters of maturity. 



[104] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



XXX 

I work to free myself, but I know how much more 
that is than to free myself. I cannot adjust 
my own life without adjusting the harmonies 
of the universe. When I have grasped the 
endless rhythm, I have also opened it to end- 
less appropriation. 



[105] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



XXXI 

I know by my outer imperfection how incomplete 
I am within. I look upon the desert of me, 
and yet expect life not to have such vasty 
barren places. 

I am incoherent, — and that that is mine is unas- 
sembled bits of life. I possess only a fraction 
of life because I possess only a fraction of 
myself. 

One day I shall come in entirety — maybe the en- 
tirety will redeem the parts. I shall come in 
the aggregate of me, and maybe that that has 
not had seeming relativity will show sequence. 

I demand that life assemble, that it command itself 
out of atoms, that it come full-formed, articu- 
late, accented of being. 



[106] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



XXXII 

If I can but establish the truth of me! 

I go in conquest up and down the earth, when I 
must know that the thing must be wrested out 
of my own soul. 

I go here and there, giving accent to this and to 
that, when it is the unspoken, inarticulate I 
that is the torment. It is I struggling to tear 
myself from the folds and the coverings. 

The answer is in me, or it is nowhere. I do not 
come asking you. I ask only myself. If it 
were in you, you could not impart it to me. I 
could not understand your words. 

I must bring the answer and the interpretation out 
of me. Until then I must go unanswered. 



[107] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



XXXIII 

I will become too big for unmeaning things. I 
will unfetter me from abnormal desires. I 
will be freed into a comprehension of sim- 
plicity. 

I will accord my life to a few simple elements. 
Once more I will be a pine standing tall and 
straight on the side of a hill, with the stars 
twinkling through my branches, and not a 
pine reset from its native soil, hung with 
tinsel baubles and colored lights. 

I will cast off the folds and layers of intricacy and 
confusion, and come forth in my naked life 
and soul. I shall come humbled at last, a 
radiant thing in illumined bareness. 

I will emerge from the maze of being and come 
forth under the open sky. 

I who have had the fireflies will have the stars. 



[108] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



XXXIV 

I am seeking me, and what if I find you, my uni- 
versal brother! 

I ask no thing for myself in which you are not 
included. When I pray for me, it is for the 
dual me, you and me. When I work, it is for 
both of us. I may seem to be doing the thing 
for myself, but I am doing it for all who can 
realize the thrill of attainment, of action and 
mastery. 

I do not come with alms, but with aims, with per- 
formance, with the benefaction of a wrought 
life. 

I, the restorer of myself, am not unconscious of 
the perishing multitude. For you and for me 
my dumb soul finds its voice. I speak the 
living word to my own listening — and your 
soul hears. I come proving me — and refute 
your doubts of you. 



[109] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



XXXV 

I who am vapor and dust will organize into a 

world. 
I will drag this human of me up to the god-plane 

of me, and it shall function as a deity. 



[110] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



XXXVI 

Life came past my door and I did not know how 
to greet it. I came clumsily, all too eager, 
like a starved bird in the snow. I wanted to 
come gently. I wanted to touch it lightly, like 
one touches the breast of a dove. 

It is one's hungry soul that commits absurdities. 
It comes always stretching its yellow beak like 
a starved fledgling. 

One day I shall be fed, and warm, and human. I 

shall be restored to myself. 
I shall come into a conscious sense of life, thrilling 

at its contact, quivering at the touch of its 

breath. 
I shall feel it deep down in the nerve centers of my 

bones. I shall taste it. I shall feed upon it. 

I shall feel it like the sting of bees. 
I shall know the sweet, moist flavor of me. 



[Ill] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



XXXVII 

The transient passes me with the hour, but the 
fixed things are with my approval. Nothing 
becomes an institution that I do not permit it. 
Nothing stays that is not tolerated. The thing 
that stays does so because it is made welcome. 
It is I who deny it, or I who give it coun- 
tenance. 

I may find myself in the midst of the cackle of 
fishwives, or in the circle of the red lives of 
whores, but it is my impotent feet that do not 
depart. 

I may pass through many strange lands in my jour- 
neyings, but it is I who pitch my tent. 



[112] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



XXXVIII 

It is not sin that I must overcome — it is incomplete- 
ness. 

I will yet do that that gives new curve to my lips, 
that leaves its reflection in my hands and in 
my carriage, that announces itself in the 
quality of my voice, that writes itself all over 
me unmistakably. 

I will come with directness and virility, with that 
of which there can be no doubt, — no longer 
with halfness, no longer with feeble intent. 

My offense against life is inarticulation, inaccent. 
Never to have spoken out round and clear! 
Never to have struck one, round full note! 



[113] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



XXXIX 

I am the walled-in sea. One day I shall break the 
mountain of rock that restrains me. I shall 
beat against the cliffs until they crumble 
under the insistence of me. 

I shall come in the might of unspent force, in the 
sweep of mighty assertion, for time, and for 
the eternity that was denied me. 

My surge shall be as the voice of angry peoples. 

My spray shall reach the sky in protest. The cor- 
morants will scream in fear of the wrath of 
me. 

I shall not release me into a narrow freedom. It 
shall be as copious as has been the denial, as 
endless as the unfilled yearning of me, as un- 
broken as the bonded years. 



[114] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



XL 



I shall know the long road that stretches like a grey- 
highway in space. 

I shall be unfurled to the paths that undulate to 
my listing. 

I shall know the release. I shall be unbound to the 
day. 

My soul in its prison-grey will come forth in the 
flush of colorful life. It will shed its grey 
cloak, like a pall. It will bury its dead and 
disperse the funeral from out its conscious- 
ness. 

I will not die of four walls while there is breath 
in the hills. My misery is born under a roof, 
but it shall perish in the fields. 



[115] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



XLI 



I will hang festoons of worlds across the arch of 

the sky. 
I will come with God's big plan of things, with 

spawn of time, with seed of eternity. 
I will live the free-hand life — I will rise up at 

dawn, and with sure, unfaltering faith, create 

the day. 
I will come at noon, and with the assurance of a 

master, paint the heavens. 
I will come at night, and with the confidence of 

one who cannot fail, hang a million stars in 

the sky. 
You will look at my life and know that a master- 
hand has builded. 



[116] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



XLII 

I will have the feel of abundance in my life, if it 
is only an abundance of sunshine and leaves 
and grasses. 

The look of poverty and woe is not an outer con- 
dition that I put on like a garment, but an 
inner condition that I exude with my breath. 

I will come like roses in their prolific season, like 
cherry blossoms in May, like fields where 
countless daisies grow. 

I will come with the prodigal profusion of life, 
like a hawthorn copse, or an orchard of 
peach-blow; like a bank of sweetbrier, or a 
cliffside of wild nasturtium. 

I will scatter myself over the earth, life's caster 
of seed. 

I will flow through the fluid channels like a stream. 
I am the alluvium, the overflow. I come to 
enrich wastes. That that was barren in the 
back-beyond-time I vegetate. 



[117] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



XLIII 

I fertilize great, barren wastes of me into a yield- 
ing abundance. 

I reset the stakes of my courage. I incorporate 
great untraveled areas. 

Today I am the shepherd minding the sheep, but 
tomorrow mine shall be the cattle on a thou- 
sand hills of my spirit. 

I who have lived and died of yearning shall be de- 
livered. 

I who have been of feeble stroke will come with 
unmistakable beat. 



[118] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



XLIV 

I shall realize life in great throes of being. I shall 
feel worlds bom within me. 

I shall know the bursting of craters, and great up- 
heavals like mountains heaved up out of the 
sea. 

I shall know the great elation, the rising like swell- 
ing tides ; that life is bursting — the dykes give 
way; the ecstasy of an escaping ocean. 

I shall know the big thrills, like torn precipices, 
like gashes rent in the earth, like avalanches 
toppling. 

I who have been so cramped and small, without 
room to breathe or be, — and the world such 
a big, big world, but my assertive power so 
small! 



[119] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



XLV 

The myriad things that are mine, had I but the 
capacity to contain them. Wherein have I 
made room for the firmament, for forests and 
hills, for the flood and recession of seas? 
Where room for humanity's coursing? 
Where my farflung space for horizons? 
Where my comprehension, my vast inclusive- 
ness? 

The paucity of life is not in the things, but in me. 
Where in all my life have I room for a 
friend? For the stature of an hour? Room 
for the events that transpire? For the puls- 
ings of night and day? 

The meagerness is in my own being, in my own 
incapacity to open and receive. Life is rich 
and abundant — I am the sparsity. 

How small has been my concept! When have I 
seen where time spawns, where stars fructify, 
where eternities lie in swaddling garments? 



[120] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



XLVI 

Have I expanded to meet the hills? What has the 
out-of-doors meant to me? Something to be 
glimpsed through a window? Something re- 
mote? Was it not mine to open to it, to walk 
straight into it? 

When have I walked out into the limitlessness and 
taken the long leads that led 'to 'everywhere? 
— I, confined by narrow tasks and perform- 
ances. Why did I not take 'them out where I 
could get the big perspective on^them, align 
them with distance? 

There is such prodigality in the abundance and 
room of Nature, and such meagemess of sup- 
ply and space in me. Where are my long 
lanes of daisies, my long banks of rue? 



[121] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



XLVII 

Where is my lavish counting? When have I 
spread great areas of green dotted with gold? 
When have I come sprinkling hillsides with a 
violet fragrance? Where is my prodigal 
hand, I so mean and measured, doling life 
grudgingly? Where is the God of profusion 
in me that spreads whole valleys of haw- 
thorn bloom? That hangs a million wild 
roses over an embankment to show His scale 
of computing? That flings a million prim- 
roses from the sky, and scorns to count the 
arbutus? Where is my outpouring soul? 
When did I come ravishing life with a wild 
riot of bloom? When did I come with easy 
luxuriance? — I entered into voluntary de- 
crepitude. 

A prodigal God smiles at the paucity of my beggar 
life! 



[122] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



XLVIII 

Life is bare because we never plant it with seed. 

We never till its long rows, never come with 

husbandry of spirit. 
If I wanted to sail the high seas, why did I not 

build a sea-going life? 
I wanted the scream of the petrel in the storm, yet 

where was that in me that did not fear being 

lashed to a mast? 
I lay hawsered to a fear, yet complained that I 

did not have the experiences that come to 

courage and daring. 



[123] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



XLIX 

If I might bring one orchid out of my soul, one 

frail narcissus, one hair fern! 
If I might bring out of its sensitized soil one tinted 

petal, one delicate tendril, one gossamer 

tracery of leaf! 
What in all my striving days do I bring forth like 

the grace of a single wilding rose? Or like 

syringa that grows rank with beauty and life, 

without strife or strain? 
Shall I ever bring forth on the stalk of my life one 

thing that will not be shamed by the salvia? 
Shall I ever have a single hour like the burst of 

God's unnumbered dawns of day? 
Shall I ever bring forth in all the years of my 

barren being like the verdure that grows with 

ease on the sides of high hills? 



[124] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



I have set out, not to surpass you, but to add cubits 
to my own strength, to go beyond my present 
cognizance, to come upon a new me; to un- 
cover the things that have long threatened in 
the burning of me; to open to the things that 
have long beat with their insistence at my 
door. 

I do not wish to surpass anyone or anything. I 
pray only to outgrow myself in emancipation 
and consciousness. 

I stipulate nothing, save that I grow. Not this 
thing must be dragged along, nor that thing 
carried on the way. I know the price and I 
will pay. I do not ask that my heart shall not 
break. I do not ask that another may not 
mourn. I ask only that I grow, and I accept 
all on that basis. 



[125] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



LI 



I have admitted all the outcast, the downtrodden, 
the underfoot. One day I shall be able to 
admit the snob, the blueblood, the aristocrat, 
and all the pretenders in the world. 



[126] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



LII 



Why mind your scorn? — I scorn myself. 

Maybe I am approaching a little nearer if you look 
at me and condemn, and I look upon your 
condemnation with indifference. 

Maybe I am coming somewhat into possession if I 
am no longer concerned with your attitude or 
mood. If I am not distracted by hissings, 
there is hope that I would not be by plaudits. 

Why ask your acceptance, when I have never had 
my own? Your approval might mean not 
much, while mine would mean consciousness 
of growth, of effacement and eradication. It 
would mean victorious struggle and conquest. 
It would mean overcoming, consciousness of 
transcendency. It would mean things at- 
tained, and things crushed beneath my feet. 

Your acceptance might come lightly with its touch 
and go, but mine would be as the rolling of 
time, as ponderous unfurlments, as prophe- 
cies fulfilled. 



[127] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



LIII 

If I would but respond to life! How she presents 
herself in a thousand phases, and I sit un- 
moved, like some defective staring into space. 

How she would entice me, how she would ravish, 
how she would enthrall, were I not dead in the 
nerve-centers of my soul. 

Life does not die, but I do. The fields are pulsing, 
the hills are alive. It is I who am insensate. 
The beat of life stops within me, and I think 
the world is dead. 

The world is enticing, and beautiful, and warm, 
and welcoming, and soft — it is only I that am 
frozen at the heart. 



[128] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



LIV 



Shall the puritan of me require that I don my 
purple mantles? 

Shall the ploughboy demand that the prince capitu- 
late? 

Shall God's white-eyed daisies decry His gorgeous 
dawns of day? 

Shall the marshglow denounce the concourse of 
stars? 



[129] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



LV 

I will come deliberately to the day. I will stand 
and look a long time upon it, with no sign of 
unease. 

I will be confidently about it. I will come to it 
tranquilly poised, with the utmost composure. 

I will approach it possessed of myself — it shall 
not disconcert me. 

There is no haste and no hurry. There is only 
deliberateness of action. 

My soul shall come quietly forth in its God- 
assurance and procedure, complacent, unper- 
turbed, with slow, sure step, calmly to the 
morning and to the setting sun, quietly into 
action, softly like falling leaves, like envelop- 
ing vapors. 



[130] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



LVI 

The nightingales came to my window and I did not 
heed. Now they have flown away into the 
deep wood, and that is why I am here in the 
deep wood of my life, looking for my lost 
birds that sing. 

I was insensate to the roses. Then one day the 
winter was upon me, and I came frantically 
imploring my June, my lost opportunity to 
comprehend. 

I will take a little more time out of life to live — 
one hour for the dawn, and one for the eve- 
ning, and one for the singing fields; one rose 
hour for the gardens, and one to set my feet 
on the crest of hills. 

Against the glitter of dew and the light of stars, 
the feel of the hills and the call of the 
meadows, I will measure my petty day. I 
will put these into the scale against the endless 
round. I will compute. I will know wherein 
lie values. 



[131] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



LVII 

Days upon days shall be cast into the incinerator. 
I shall destroy the unmeaning and the un- 
meant. I shall render them to ash, to white, 
harmless ash and a memory. 

I shall have real issues to confront. There shall 
be happenings in my days. Things shall 
come to pass. There shall be conflicts and 
decisions. There shall be loves and hates and 
burnings. 

Life diverse! Its divergent realities! I shall have 
the experiences of beauty, and the experi- 
ences of love, and the experiences of strength. 
I shall have that that can come to me only 
through the grace of my body, and that that 
can come to me only through the warmth of 
my breast, and that that comes through tlie 
granite pillars of me. 

I shall have incantations, and lullabies, and martial 
music. 



[132] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



LVIII 

So much there is in life that is excrement, that is 
effete. I will cleanse the channels of their 
putridity, the arteries of their fever. I will 
cause cleansing waters to pour and cool winds 
to blow. 

I will bring the health of simplicity to my bur- 
dened soul and days. 

I will leave this hall of dead bones, and come to 
my bare, board table, with its flavor of God. 

I will scourge the money-changers out of the 
temples of my life. 

I will drive the hosts from out my soul that have 
come with camp and flocks and pitched their 
tents. I will drive them beyond the border 
of my consciousness, with only dead camp- 
jfires to remind me, and the outgoing marks 
of feet. 



[133] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



LIX 



How can I interpret inaudible directions? How 
can my soul hear in the clamoring and the 
din? 

I have wanted the soft music of evening shadows, 
but there is a hurdy-gurdy playing in my 
days. 

I have wanted the soft echoes of pipes from the 
hills, but there is a rasping trumpet sounding. 

I have come blatantly, beating the gongs of life. 
One day I shall come quietly, in the humility 
of my great and wondrous soul. I who have 
beaten only tom-toms shall come thrumming 
the sweet lyre of being. 



[134] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



LX 

I cannot dream beauty and express ugliness, — ^the 
concept of roses must bring forth radiance. 

The consciousness of the light imprisoned in pearls 
must bring forth a colorful, dancing vibrance. 

The inner rapture, like the fine gold feeling of the 
Nebulae, must express itself in stars. 

I who think beauty must come with it exuding from 
me like a fragrant nimbus. 

If I conceive beauty, I must walk in loveliness. 

If I conceive twilights, I must manifest in threno- 
dies, and the jasmine's breath, with a silver, 
moonswept sheen. 



[135] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



LXI 

Again and again we cry "I can bear no more!" — 
that is the human of us. And again and again 
we bear more,— that is the god of us. 



[136] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



LXII 

One day the hour will strike; it will call to me to 
arise, and what if my unused limbs shall fail 
me? 

It will call to the swift and the fleet, to him of used 
and practised strength, but how shall I re- 
spond, I so cramped and complaining through 
the years? 



[137] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



LXIII 

Action! — that one stupendous word I will translate 
into my soul. 

My days shall be peopled. There shall be run- 
nings to and fro, and chatterings. There shall 
be pistons sounding, and the whirr of wheels. 
There shall be busy days' endings, with reck- 
onings and summings-up. 



[138] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



LXIV 

To accouche a thought, to give birth to an era or 
mark a time, to leave one's footprints on a 
century! 

To put a new circle around life, to add a new coun- 
try, or a new hill, or a new tree! 

To be an explorer of life, and come with news from 
the far zone of the soul, with a new hope, a 
new peace, a new joy, a new meaning! 

To plant a standard on a hill, to leave a record 
buried under a rock! 



[139] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



LXV 

Let Life show the ship I have buih, the hill I have 
leveled, the new boundary I set upon the 
plain, the new cubit I added to truth. Let 
these show in the liber of me, in my face and 
manner. 



[140] 



A SOUL'S FARING. 



LXVI 

There was a time when life had the look of a 
smooth, unbroken, virgin prairie, the look of 
a slim girl, but now it has the deep lines of 
life, of child-bearing, of much parturition. 
It is heavy and seamed with living, like soil 
with the marks of the share. It has the look 
of much bringing forth, the mother-look of 
much brooding and attendant care. 

It is no longer youth with the maiden look in its 
eyes — it is maturity bearing its pack. 



[141] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



LXVII 

Do I forget how to be glad, how to feel the sun and 
the grasses, how to romp with the winds and 
laugh with the trees? Do I comprehend the 
rejoicing hills and admit them? Does the 
clamoring sky find friend in me? 

I come heavy, like barnacled ships. No longer 
lithe and light, but with the sediment of life 
set in. No longer doing the graceful thing, 
but heavy and obese. 

I will leave it there where it pulled me down, 
the heavy accretion of the years. I will renew 
the instinct that once would have soared, that 
would have winged its way to the sky. 

Once more I will come fine and thin, attenuated. 

I will come faintly touching the tips of flowers. 
Life that has become hard as tendons shall 
be restored to its gauze and its filament. The 
iron woman shall be restored to the filigree 
silver. 

Life that is grained in granite shall be softened. 

I am an antidote even to myself. I will amelio- 
rate. 

[142] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



I will hang lush grasses all over the bare rocks. 

They shall be fringed with a green entwining 

and bordered with bloom. 
I will spread a shade and a coolness where now 

the sun beats down. 
I will walk in the shadowy softness, like a mantle 

of mist overspreading. 



[143] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



LXVIII 

What if life came by with freedom, and I knew 
not how to take it? — I, habitated to bondage, 
the eagle chained to the rock, and when the 
chain was slipped, with no impulse to soar. 

What if she slipped the thongs and let my burden 
fall from me, and yet I did not move on? I 
had lost the use of buoyant feet. My bur- 
dened back no longer knew response or 
resilience. 

What life would need to bring to me with her gift 
of freedom, would be a new sense of freedom 
for the one that had atrophied. I, the little, 
mean, habitated slave to a condition, 
weighted down like divers who go down to 



[144] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



LXIX 

I try to grasp the infinite, when I have never 

grasped the hour. 
I want heaven, and I have never laid hold of the 

earth. 
I try to reach God, when I have never reached man. 
Today goes unperformed, yet I demand an infinity 

of years. 
I will not ask of the resurrection after death. I 

am concerned with the resurrection in life. I 

who am buried in the tomb of today want the 

assurance of the ascension tomorrow. I do 

not ask if I shall live then — I am not sure that 

I live now. 
I do not want a beautiful theory that will make my 

going sweet. I want a beautiful fact that will 

sweeten my stay. 



[145] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



LXX 

I will register my way through life in color, or 
in song, or maybe in chiseled marble, or 
pounded brass. By these things you shall 
know me. You shall know how it is with my 
soul. 



[146] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



LXXI 

To be willing to be nothing. 

To do the work, and erase the workman. 

To paint the picture, and remove the palettes and 

myself. 
To build a temple, and be willing to be the bearer 

of the chalice, the keeper of the vestry, the 

swayer of the burning myrrh. 
To build me a lofty spire to the sky, not in 

pride but in all humility. It shall touch the 

heavens, while I, its humble builder, kneel 

lowly on its stone steps to pray. 



[147] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



LXXII 

There is a river fringed with willows, a little river, 
flowing ever through my days. Its source is 
back there in the youth-time, when it wore its 
ineffaceable channel, when it imprinted its 
old mill, its covered bridge and its seven 
hills, until it is like fossil tracery of fern on 
rock, these pictures of its sand-bar, its wooden 
dam and its stone abutment. 

I still wade there barefoot in my river. I still 
drift on my river in long hours of recall. I 
am still a young, slim youth-thing, and not 
this world-worn one dreaming back to a time. 



[148] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



LXXIII 

Life might have grown flowers and vines in the 
beginning, but now I must grow them to cover 
the fissures and the rents. 

I must grow forests on my hills to cover the up- 
heaved rock, and deep verdure in my valleys, 
to cover the bed of my dead sea. 



[149] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



LXXIV 

My life shall no longer be locust blossoms that 
have never hung exotic, nor roses that have 
never come out of their latency. 

Its lilies shall unfold on their long stems, and its 
violets grasp their purple souls out of the soil. 
Its poinsettias shall assemble their crimson 
beings out of the earth and the elements. 

My life that is many things that are unformed, 
uncreate, atomic, shall have coherence. 



[150] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



LXXV 

I said I was living life, but I was misliving it. 
What I called life was death. I was putting 
the grave-clothes on everything worth while. 

Knowing that the thing I live is not life, but death; 
not truth, but falsity; not nature, but distor- 
tion; will I rise up and do the thing, or am I 
but one more coward of being? 



[151] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



LXXVI 

Let my soul awake, though it follow that all that 
makes life today is but part of the dream. 
What a small price to pay for verity! 

I will accept truth, though it mean that every pres- 
ent reality must pass as a chimera. 



[152] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



LXXVII 

Have I the courage of my prayers? 

I pray for a thing, but if it came, am I sure I 
should have the fortitude to accept it? Have 
I the capacity to accept truth? We pray, and 
have not the courage to accept the answer to 
our prayers — and still we pray. 

We invite a thing to depart, and then nail it down 
for fear it will. We pray for our misery to 
go, and when it gets up to do so, we go over 
and lock the door. We cry for freedom, and 
we cry harder when we get it. 



[153] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



LXXVIII 

We have not the courage of the sundering, the 

fortitude of consummation. 
It is not to know what to do, but strength to do it, 

knowing. 



[154] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



LXXIX 

I should believe in myself if God Himself faltered 
in belief of me. 

I should remember the time when the thing I 
wrought refused to be, and I should know 
how He felt when He looked despairingly 
upon me, a world that would not cohere, frag- 
ments that would not assemble, a meaning 
that refused to manifest. 



[155] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



LXXX 

Deliverance! It is something we see when we turn 
in our sleep, in our restless dream. 

If one could but understand that one's crucifixion 
is the way of one's ascension, but it is so slow 
a process and one is crushed under the weight 
of its seeming unmeaning. 

How could I know when I was buried in the tomb 
that the stone would roll away? 



[156] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



LXXXI 

The things that are etched upon my life — acid on 

copperplate! . . . 
To know the disillusionments of life, and to come 

enchanted still. 
To break all its glass balls, and then to find that 

life did not lie in the glass balls. 
To have all my idols shattered, and then to find 

God in the earth at their base. 



[157] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



LXXXII 

I will fulfill my wildest dream of receptivity of 

life. 
I will trust the thing which I involuntarily am, and 

one day it shall be verified and confirmed. 
I will find new currents in me of untried force and 

velocity. 
I will be lusty and virile, that the thing I do may 

be strong in the mesh. 
I am the great distributor, the great dispenser, in 

their exalted meaning. 



[158] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



LXXXIII 

Life may take everything out of my days, but the 

real things remain. 
You may destroy my castles, but I have the timbers 

to build ten thousand more. 



[159] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



LXXXIV 

Are there no far reaches in me, no unexplored 
worlds? Are there no undiscovered peoples? 
Am I so limited and defined? 

Is there no far, far East, no sunset land? Is there 
no frozen North, no torrid equator? 

Are there no horizons of yearning, no unwinged 
firmaments of longing? No depths and 
heights and breadths of unappeasement? 

Have I no estate over which my soul has long made 
beaten paths? No things which yearning has 
long established as my own? 

Is there nothing in me that soars and sings? No 
untrodden areas of delight? No undefined, 
ecstatic vistas? 

Do I not quiver with joy's vagueness, with unnamed 
realization of dream? With undefined yearn- 
ing for the ultimate of me? 



[160] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



LXXXV 

I shall not mind what I am, if I have the courage 
to nail it to the bulletin board on the public 
square. My vindication shall be my zealot's 
faith. 

I am not less than the mountain range that 
stretches away in its infinite line of being, that 
lifts up its head, confident and without 
apology. 

My life is not less than the stars that come forth 
in their place at night and shine. 

Whatever I do, or am, give me the courage to 
espouse it. I might know what to do about 
sin or defects, but I should not know what to 
do about cravenness. 



[161] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



LXXXVI 

Only I am unstable. The sun does not hesitate in 
its shining, the dawn presents in assurance. 
Only I vacillate, am ill at ease. 

Only I come forth in weakness, in unaccented ac- 
tion and performance, in the unfaith of life, 
in wavering unbelief and insecurity, doubting 
the time, the placement, and the reason for 
being. 

Only I am unpoised. God is going His equable 
way, the great law of cosmos has not been 
disturbed, the universe remains serene, the 
stars have not missed a night in the sky. Day 
and night continue to alternate. They have 
not been confused. 

All these are not perturbed — why then I? 

It is only I who am shouting and waving my hands, 
only I who am shrieking to space, who dis- 
claim my security, who have not peace. The 
stars are quiet, the moon is serene, the earth 
is rhythmic. Only I am out of harmony and 
ill at ease. 

[162] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



LXXXVII 

Our prayers make beggars of us all. We pray for 
blessings, when they can only be evolved; for 
peace when it is a result; and for grace when 
it is a growth. 

We ask as alms that which is ours by divine dili- 
gence. We pray for things to be bestowed 
that have their origin only in us, and for 
things to be given that are already in our 
possession. 



[163] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



LXXXVIII 

The meanness of life, but the splendor of its pos- 
sibilities! 

The miserable thing I make of it, but the God- 
thing it might be! 

I might drain it of its dead waters, and plant banks 
of roses, and glad trees, and buoyant grasses. 

I might entice the wanton winds to dance through 
it, and the moonbeams to caper over it. 

I might bring lovers to wander through its twilight 
fragrance. 



[164] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



LXXXIX 

I have no quarrex with nature, and one day I shall 
have none with individuals. 



[165] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



XC 



Somewhere that radiant thing, Life, lies latent in 
the brier stem of me, and one day it will burst 
forth in crimson roses. 

One day the new spring soil of me will emit its 
blossoming violet soul. 

One night the lark will sing in my trees. 



[166] 



A SOUL'S FARING 



XCI 

Somewhere there are fledglings in a nest that I 
have come to feed, that must otherwise perish. 

Somewhere some one prays to be released, some 
one prays that I shall not be so long, that I 
shall not tarry on the way. 

The rabble is at my door, the world is demanding. 
It holds out its shackled wrists, and points to 
its greying temples. 

And I am coming. I am delayed — delayed be- 
cause I, too, am lost, but I am coming, and I 
will arrive, and I will reach you! 



[167] 



OF CONGRESS 

iillllllllil 

015 930 559 4 



